


The Way of Things

by sterlingsparrow



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Madeleine Era, is it canon era or modern au? no one will ever know, it's probably canon era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 17:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17902172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlingsparrow/pseuds/sterlingsparrow
Summary: Madeleine has a habit of asking Javert to sleep at his side. Javert cannot fathom why.





	The Way of Things

The sheets of Monsieur Madeleine’s bed are inexplicably soft, the mattress stacked high with quilts. There are exactly two pillows.

The mayor is asleep with one broad arm is slung over Javert’s chest, fingers curled around his rib cage. Javert laces their fingers together silently. It is the middle of the night, and the room is lit only by the moonlight streaming through the window. It makes Madeleine’s silvery hair shine.

Javert has an inexplicable urge to run his free hand through those silver locks.

That would not be proper, he reminds himself, driving the thought away. He’s here because Madeleine asked it of him. Madeleine is Javert’s superior, thus Javert must obey. His own feelings play no role in the matter.

Javert sighs. The sound is too loud to his ears in the silent room, and he glances at Madeleine’s face.

His expression is placid. The man sleeps on.

• • •

_“Javert, I would like you to come home with me tonight.”_

He hadn’t realized what the mayor meant. The words had been preceded by a question of his marital status, though he is sure the man already knew, and Javert had assumed he was asking something far different. He was not particularly interested in the idea. But Madeleine had asked; when Madeleine asks, Javert obeys.

It is simply the way of things.

But when he went home with the mayor that night, they had first eaten dinner, and then Madeleine had offered a nightshirt to him before crawling into bed. He’d apologized for the size difference (too wide in the shoulders and too short in the torso), babbling that he should have thought this out.

Javert stood dumbstruck, the nightshirt in hand. This was not what men meant when they asked others to come home with them. He had learned the meaning from a lifetime on the streets. He had learned by both following his mother as a small boy while she sold herself to earn money, and by walking the streets at night with a watchful eye as an adult policeman. _I would like you to come home with me tonight._ As Javert knew it, it was not an innocent statement.

And yet Madeleine sat on the bed before him, wringing his hands and as innocent as could be.

He simply wanted to share a bed with someone, to have another body beside him as he slept.

Javert, as his subordinate, is obliged to follow Madeleine’s instruction. He is happy to. Perhaps that is why the man has chosen him for this particular duty.

The mornings are odder than the nights. Madeleine will wake before Javert and press a kiss to his mouth. His touch is always chaste, for Madeleine is a saint. And then he thanks him for another night at his side.

It puzzles him. The first time, Javert protested; he was only doing this out of duty and deference. There was no need to thank him. He was simply doing as his superior asked.

_“This is more than duty_ ,” the mayor had murmured, and pressed a kiss to his jaw.

Javert debated what it meant for many days afterward. 

• • •

He shifts, making Madeleine’s arm slip. Automatically, Javert reaches for it, positioning it across his chest once more. Madeleine sighs in his sleep and turns, and suddenly he’s clutching Javert to his chest.

Javert’s bed at home has only one pillow. When he asked Madeleine as to why he, a unmarried man, had two, the mayor had flushed and mumbled something about needing to hold something at night. Javert has apparently filled that position very well.

He leans into Madeleine’s touch, bunching his shoulders in as to fit better. But he cannot help knocking an elbow against the other man’s chest, and the mayor’s eyes flutter open. He looks up, gaze soft. “What time is it?”

“Middle of the night,” Javert whispers. He’s too comfortable to get up and look at the clock. “Go back to sleep.”

Madeleine kisses his neck drowsily and barely draws his head back before resting it on the pillows again. “Good night, _mon chéri_.”

With that, he snuggles against Javert and falls back asleep, arms still wrapped around him.

Javert stares down at that silver head, stunned. He allows himself to stroke Madeleine’s hair. What sort of game is the man playing?

It cannot be that he loves him. Javert is not the sort of man one loves; he is ugly and brusque and has no time for such things. He is in Madeleine’s bed only because he was asked.

If he continues to tell himself that, perhaps it will become true. Perhaps this—this _thing_ inside him, that makes him want to run his hands through silver hair and linger in the mayor’s kisses, perhaps it will vanish. Be sated.

This is simply one lonely man asking another lonely man to lie beside him because he cannot bear to sleep alone. Madeleine does not care for him. He kisses him and holds him at night because he is lonely, but too nervous to ask anyone else.  
Javert has taught himself to know when people are lying. It is a skill most useful for a police inspector. He knows in his heart which of them is lying, and it is not the mayor.

He sighs, closing his eyes, and presses his face into Madeleine’s soft waves of hair. At least he can allow himself this. Tell himself he does it only because it will please Madeleine. Gently, he caresses the man’s back.

That will not be so easy to explain to himself.

The sheets are so inexplicably soft, the quilts so warm. Madeleine’s embrace is comforting. Slowly, Javert falls asleep.


End file.
